I had expected to see again, and to feel, as well, the starry charms of Coralie Rothvelt; but what I confronted was far different. The charms were here, unquenched by this stare of daylight, but from them shone a lustre of womanliness wholly new. It seemed to grow on even when a tricksy gleam shot through it as she replied, "Yes, our acquaintance dates from Gallatin."
HOLLANDER AT DESHIMA WATCHING FOR A SHIP. HOLLANDER AT DESHIMA WATCHING FOR A SHIP.Dont be such a damned fool, Emmeline, he said angrily, answering his own thoughts. He had divined hers quite correctly, and the justice that lay behind this rude speech struck her full. Her only course was to take refuge in her own propriety. She knew how to behave.She had an easy word and a graceful speech for every one. An old diplomatist, watching her earnestly, went away muttering that she must be to the manner born. Her smile was so real and caressing, but it deepened now, and the red lips quivered slightly as a bright-eyed, square-headed young man came up the steps and bowed over her hand.
"HeHehadn't got no back to his head," blurted out Tom at last.Time was going on, and it became necessary that our travellers should follow its example. The Doctor engaged places for them by the steamer for Kobe, the port for the western capital of Japan, and at the appointed time they went on board. Before their departure, they had an opportunity to visit one of the tea-packing establishments for which Yokohama is famous, and the process they witnessed there was of special interest to the boys. Here is the account that Frank gave of it in his next letter home:As they walked away from the kosatsu they saw a group engaged in the childish amusement of blowing soap-bubbles. There were three persons in the group, a man and two boys, and the youngsters were as happy as American or English boys would have been under similar circumstances. While the man blew the bubbles, the boys danced around him and endeavored to catch the shining globes. Fred and Frank were much interested in the spectacle, and had it not been for their sense of dignity, and the manifest impropriety of interfering, they would have joined in the sport. The players were poorly clad, and evidently did not belong to the wealthier class; but they were as happy as though they had been princes; in fact, it is very doubtful if princes could have had a quarter as much enjoyment from the chase of soap-bubbles.I am deeply grieved, he said, but as you will not listen to anything I say, there is no use in my saying any more. Good-bye, Miss Alice.{212}He had been glad to abandon the hospitals in favour of a comfortable practice and the leisured life of a country town. Great Wymering had offered him plenty of distractions that soothed the slight wound to his vanity caused by the discovery that he had over-estimated his originality. In a few years much had happened that helped to confirm his new view of himself as a social creature with a taste for the amenities of existence. And then he had been able to keep up his cricket. In the winter there were bridge parties, amateur theatricals, dinner parties with quite ordinary but agreeable people, local affairs into which a man whose health was under suspicion and whose sympathies were just perceptibly narrowing, could plunge without too much effort being required in order to rise to such occasions. And he had the witty temperament. Quite easily, he maintained a reputation for turning out a bon-mot on the spur of the moment, something with a faint element of paradox. He would say such things as, "Only those succeed in life who have brains and can forget the fact," or "To be idle is the goal of all men, but only the industrious achieve it." When taunted by[Pg 46] a young lady who suspected him of wasted talents, even genius, he retorted that "Genius is only an accumulation of neglected diseases."Im ashamed of myself, he said. Your brother is perfectly right. Go down, then, as you suggest in the morning.
